Ten Trends Driving Cyber Security In 2019

1. Coming of cyber warfare

   Countries will continue to invest in attack infrastructure as they have over the past few years. The most recent US intelligence worldwide threat assessment suggests that 33 countries now have cyber attack capabilities, up from just 14 in 2012. So it would seem that cyber forces and commands have become an integral part of any nation's armed forces, not just their intelligence apparatus. Sadly we may see these tools trialled and occasionally used in anger as geopolitical tensions continue to rise, as well as a shift towards open attribution of such attacks as part of the political and diplomatic response to these activities.

2. Lack of consensus on cyber law

   Consensus over international norms of behaviour in the cyberspace will remain elusive with countries creating more intrusive regulatory and legal frameworks to address cyber security concerns. Balkanisation of the internet will continue and global firms will become increasingly frustrated. The Paris call for trust and security in cyberspace was a step in the right direction, but it did not win universal support with many countries holding very different views on what constitutes the core of their national cyber security.

3. Proliferation of 'fake news'

   The battle for cyber space isn't just about disruption of infrastructure, although that will be a concern for many nations, it is also about the battle for hearts and minds. We expect to see more attention being paid to 'fake news' and to the censorship and removal of inappropriate content, however it is defined. We will also see more automated targeting of individuals and specific interest groups through social media, whether that be tailored advertising, trolling or spear phishing. The political debates about the appropriateness of such activities will continue into 2019 and beyond, but so will the build out of the tools and infrastructure required to detect and takedown such content.

4. The future is in the clouds

   New business models are emerging to exploit the flexibility offered by cloud solutions as firms continue to migrate legacy services while occasionally beginning to question the long term economics of doing so. Regulators will agonise over the systemic risk that dependency on cloud providers creates while simultaneously recognising the inevitability of that move. Organised crime groups will, however, find creative ways of identifying ill configured cloud instances, and exploit the information and...